The hack to open these metal doors would likely involve power tools.
“Tomorrow,” Lane said, and I forced myself to sneer.
“I won't be here tomorrow.”
Lane, already walking away, might not have realized how his shoulders slumped. “I know that, Thorne.”
And then he was gone.
I'd meant I wouldn't be in any jail, but he meant I would be—and not here, not in this abandoned wing, but in the real jail.
Fuck. He knew he couldn't let that happen. What the hell was going on?
My father was going to have kittens.
A second deputy entered the hallway. He carried leg shackles. Really?
Entrapment, I thought. Mind games. There'd been something wackadoo about this job from the beginning.
If Lane Lacompte thought he could play me, he had the wrong boy.
“I have a right to an attorney.” Maybe I'd made a mistake. Maybe I should have asked for my one phone call four hours ago.
“Coming right up, sir,” said the leg shackles guy. “As soon as you're processed, sir.”
What the actual unholy fuck.
Thing is I'd learned to rely on Lane to get me released. To drop the charges. I'd been in tight spots before, but he was in position to make trouble go away.
That's what my father paid him for. One of the things my father paid him for. Excuse me. That's why my father contributed to his campaigns. The legal form of payoff.
It's the reason I flirted with him. One of the reasons I flirted with him. The other reason? It was fun to see that flustered, frustrated look flicker across his face.
And yet somehow it had come to this—shackles around my ankles, a bullet-headed deputy at each elbow. It seemed like a lot of drama for an art theft.
“No, seriously,” I said. “Is all this strictly necessary?”
They exchanged snickers, which let me know they too recognized an excess of drama when they saw it.
“You're a dangerous man,” said Thing One.
“I heard Ray Shelvin pissed his pants when you knocked him out,” said Thing Two.
The story kept getting better and better. “He tried to grab my ass and fell on his. Hardly a knock-out blow to anything but his pride.”
“Hey, man, if it was up to us, you'd get a medal for smacking down that asshole,” said Thing One. “But it ain't up to us.”
Instead of escorting me to check-in, they took me directly to the new building's interrogation room three. I'd been there before, and it didn't look any more interesting this time around. My butt went cold, then numb, sitting in a hard metal chair. Eventually, Jeanretta Hebert, my father's criminal attorney, arrived. He was a real estate investor, not a criminal, so I guess she was actually my criminal attorney. Either way, he's the one who paid her.
A cool blonde woman of uncertain age. Long legs in a knee-length skirt. Helmet bob. Judging from the visible Botox jab marks around the eyes, she'd come straight from the doctor's office, the place where they kept you from being able to figure out if she was thirty-five or fifty-five.
“Yo, Jeanretta,” I said.
“Yo.” The way she said it, you could hear the air quotes around it. She was originally from Atlanta and had a strange sense of irony.
“How's it hanging?”
“Same as it ever was.” She turned to the two deputies leaning against the wall with their arms folded. “Can we get these shackles off my client? I need to talk to him alone.”
“Your funeral, lady. The sheriff wants an example made. Your client assaulted an officer of the law.”
“Well, I think you've made your point. You're going to behave yourself now, aren't you, Thorne?”
I made my eyes big and innocent. “Yes, ma'am. This is all a huge misunderstanding, anyway. All I need is a chance to explain to Officer Shelvin that I didn't mean anything when I accidentally nudged him with my elbow.”
The steel was gone, and then the deputies were gone. I felt light all of a sudden, as if I could flap my arms and fly away.
Jeanretta pulled out a leather folder and frowned at the paperwork within. “Honestly, Thorne, you really fucked up this time.”
I shrugged.
“I'm not playing with you, sugar. Your father has steam coming out of his ears.”
“Lane Lacompte will drop the charges like he always does.”
“Lane Lacompte ain't doing shit. There's something wrong with this case.” She wiped her hand over her face, not hard, but enough to feel the needle marks. Her hand dropped.
“Fuck you mean, something wrong with the case? I don't understand.” Although I had a sick feeling that I did. I'd done this to myself. Taken too much for granted.
It was a rookie mistake to count on Lane Lacompte to get me out of trouble. You can move faster if you go in quick and dirty, but you'd better have a damn good backup plan. Sloppy jobs are more likely to blow up in your face. The district attorney was my backup plan. Or so I thought.
“I don't understand either. Lacompte's got to know he's going to pay a price with your father if he allows this prosecution to go forward.”
I thought about the way Lane's shoulder's slumped when he walked away. Maybe it was all an act, but it was the posture of a man giving up on somebody.
Forget him. I didn't need him anyway. Time to strategize.
“So what's our play here? What's the deal?”
Because there was always a deal. Judges hate going to trial. Especially rural judges. Judges like to golf, to fish, and to hunt. They like to drink and play poker. Some of them like to smoke cigars.
What they don't like is sitting on a hard bench in a courtroom hearing cases. What they don't like is press conferences after they sentence the sons of rich families and get the media all fired up.
Jeanretta shook her head, really just her chin. A tiny, puzzled motion. “You know I'm required by law to put all offers in front of you but I can't advise you to take this alleged deal. It's such shit you might as well put up a fight.”
“You're starting to scare me. Just tell me.”
“Three years.”
I didn't know I was holding my breath until I breathed out again. Three years probation would be a major pain in the ass, but I could do it if I had to. “So what all does that involve? I already know there's monthly drug testing and crap but that's no problem for me.” I didn't do drugs. A professional thief needs steady hands.
“No, suge. You're not hearing me. Three years in Angola.”
It was so ridiculous I just looked at her for a minute, then shrugged. “Well, bail me out until we can figure out what the hell they really want.” Because that wasn't it. Couldn't be.
She sighed. “I'd like nothing better, but they're being hard-ass about this.”
“Hard-ass meaning what?”
“I can't bail you out tonight, sugar. The judge has his daughter's third-grade school play this evening, and...”
“The fuck you say.”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He offered me tickets.”
“You got to be shitting me. You're telling me I have to spend the night in jail because the judge's daughter is playing princess?”
Fucking Lane Lacompte. He would have known that. It was his job to keep on top of what the judges were doing.
“Complete with tiara, sugar.” Jeanretta's lips twisted, an expression of her own exasperation. She couldn't enjoy the thought of how my father was going to react to this news. “Stay chill, and we'll get you out in the morning.”
“There's no fucking way. Completely unacceptable.” Fucking Lane. Just fuck him. I knew damn good and well he could've arranged to drop the charges. No bail hearing necessary. No bullshit about a third grader's fucking school play. Just open the door and shoo me away.
“I'm sorry, suge.” She was still shaking her head. “Listen, Thorne, I don't have to tell you to watch your ass. And button up that dumb-ass jumpsuit.”
Chapter Three
LANE
A
judge, a mayor, and a prosecutor walk into a leather bar... and it's no joke.
Small towns corrupt, and this small town had corrupted absolutely. I went to law school and studied to become a prosecutor because I wanted to see justice done, but something got turned around between then and now. The system was shit. You were supposed to treat everybody alike, but everybody isn't alike, and I was tired of pretending.
Certain prisoners, especially young gay prisoners, weren't being rehabilitated. They were being destroyed. I hated waking up every day knowing I was a key player in a broken system. Some young men, given a chance, could change their lives, but our current system didn't give them that chance.
There were three of us in on it. Brent Comptan was one of three judges in the parish criminal court system. Willis Dauphine was the mayor of Beauville, the parish seat. I was the parish district attorney, in other words, the top prosecutor. The top cop, if you want to think of it that way. The funny part is, even though we all lived and worked in Angelina Parish, two hundred miles to the west, the three of us really did cook up this plan in a New Orleans leather bar. Until a chance encounter there, I hadn't even been sure the other two were gay.
We called it diversion. Certain carefully chosen arrestees might be removed from the criminal justice system and placed in an alternative system. They needed to be both young enough and intelligent enough to change. Adaptable. Healthy. From the first hour I discussed the new program with Brent and Willis, I had Thorne in the back of my mind as a possible candidate. He had everything a man needed for a bright future—looks, family background, health, intelligence.
The only thing he lacked was an incentive to change his criminal ways.
I was sorry to see him back in jail but maybe, just maybe, I was a little excited too. He could have the world at his feet, if only he stopped using his gifts to relieve Beauville's better-heeled residents of their fine gemstones.
Despite the combined resources of a judge, a mayor, and a prosecutor, it wasn't always easy to extract somebody from the criminal justice system. It had to be done quietly and without attracting undue attention. As a result, sometimes the target got assigned to the wrong judge.
I hadn't planned on Thorne spending even one night in the Angelina Parish jail. Six men to a cell meant to hold two, and the new guys always ended up sleeping on the floor.
Fucking Judge Broussard and his fucking daughter's school play. Fucking Snow White.
The thought of Thorne in a cage overnight with five other men packed close enough to smell his five-hundred-dollar-an-ounce cologne...
Don't ask me why we couldn't put some of those men in the old building. Some federal judge somewhere had condemned it. Too many storms, too many floods. Black mold. Seemed to me that either way we were breaking some judge's ruling. A condemned jail or an overcrowded jail. Either way, it was a health risk to the prisoners, especially the most vulnerable. The young ones.
The attractive ones.
I'd paid a deputy to stick close to Thorne's cell all night, but the deputy was on the wrong side of the bars when the fight broke out. Thorne had a bruise on that cut-glass cheekbone when they brought him to my office in the morning.
He did not look refreshed or well-rested. He looked pissed-off.
Jeanretta Hebert wasn't particularly thrilled with me either. “What the fuck, Lane?” she asked. “I'm serious now. What the actual fuck?”
“Take off the cuffs,” I said to the deputy.
“This man has violent tendencies.” The deputy's voice was neutral, his face smooth and expressionless. He was repeating something he'd been told and trying not to reveal he thought it was kinda, sorta funny from his side of the cage.
“He broke the creep's nose because you boys didn't move fast enough to stop the harassment.” I'd already seen the video from the security cam, and I knew damn well the sheriff had too. “Self defense is not a problem for me. There's zero tolerance for bullying in my jail.”
The deputy shrugged and unlocked the cuffs. Thorne shook out his hands with a certain amount of dramatic emphasis.
“Watch the door,” I said.
The deputy folded his arms over his chest and stood in the open doorframe.
“I mean from the other side of it.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, by which he meant, “You're an idiot, sir. And, anyway, it's the sheriff's jail, sir.” But he closed the door behind him and left the three of us alone.
“The actual fuck is this shit?” Jeanretta asked. “You don't have the common sense to put Thornhill Raynaud's son in a private cell?”
She knew better. This was posturing.
“This isn't a hotel, Jeanretta. There's no private cells this time of century. No honeymoon suite for our VIP guests.”
Thorne was now doing that tension-reducing exercise where you lift your shoulders as close to your ears as you can before dropping them back down. Distracting, and probably intended to be distracting.
“There's a bail hearing in two hours,” I said. “I don't want to still be talking.”
“I don't know that we've got a lot to talk about, sugar. Why are you being so hard-ass? We both know my client doesn't belong in jail. He's a non-violent offender. A young man who's made a few mistakes. No danger to anybody.”
Thorne started to say something, and Jeanretta put a hand on his arm to shut him up.
“I'll do the talking,” she said. “That's what your father pays me for.”
“OK, but one question,” Thorne said.
“Zero questions,” I said, at the same time she said, “Suge, could you kindly exercise your right to shut the fuck up?” Sugar, suge, sweetness, honey. Those were the kind of words a Georgia peach like Jeanretta used, although always with a strong sense of irony. Like any good defense attorney, she was an actor with a keen awareness of how things sounded.
Which wasn't often the way things actually were.
A beat of silence. Everybody calculating. Wheels spinning in scheming heads. Thorne still thought he had room to negotiate, and Jeanretta apparently did too.
“The fact is, your non-violent offender is going to be charged with assault on a police officer and, potentially, with assault on another prisoner,” I said. “To a jury, he looks an awful lot like a bad guy.”
Thorne snorted, but the smile curling the corners of his lips told me he was flattered. Guys that age like imagining they're the bad guy. I remembered those years. Fortunately, for me, I could work out that aggression on the football field.
“Yeah, about that bad guy crap,” Jeanretta said. “I don't like the way the sheriff's office has mischaracterized my client in the press. All of a sudden, every unsolved robbery in Acadiana is being laid at his door. Have you seen this morning's local bird-cage liner?”
What would she like me to say? This wasn't New Orleans, let alone some actual big city. There were a very limited number of master thieves in Angelina Parish. Sure, there were other robberies, but they mostly involved fucked-up crackheads and paint huffers who got caught as soon as they tried to sell their ill-gotten gains in the nearest pawn shop.
A lot of cops had grumbled for a lot of years Thorne was getting away with murder in this parish because of his father. I should know. Seems like every time I played golf with the sheriff, I had to hear about it.
“Look,” I said. “Do you honestly expect me to believe anybody else is responsible for the disappearance of the entire Ottis Art Collection? Not to mention the Manderson Satsuma.”
I hadn't even known there was such a thing as orange garnets until the Manderson's three thousand carat gem had vanished in the dark of night three years ago.
“My client is not charged with stealing an art collection or a gemstone. I'm not sure why the newspaper is raking up these old accusations now.”
We glared at each other across my desk. Shelvin had probably given an unfortunate interview. What the hell was I supposed to do about that?
Anyway, I didn't have all day to argue with a criminal and a cr
iminal attorney. “Let's cut to the chase. Ray Shelvin has the right to file assault charges if he was injured in the line of duty, and right now he's got his panties in a twist because he thinks Thorne made him look like the idiot he is.”
“Have you seen Shelvin's alleged injury, Lane?” Jeanretta rolled her eyes, then pointed her chin at the bruise on Thorne's cheek. “Now that's an injury. That is in fact what's called in civil court a facial injury. I don't know how I'm going to explain this to Thornhill in a way that'll stop him from filing a lawsuit against the parish.”
“You should see the other guy.” Thorne's pride would be the death of him yet.
Jeanretta glared daggers at him. “The right to remain silent is the cornerstone of American jurisprudence.”
He batted his eyelashes.
I had the distinct impression Thorne was starting to enjoy himself. What happened to scared straight? Well, not straight. That wasn't going to happen. But at least a little scared would be nice. Some token show of respect for the awesome power of the law. Instead, he appeared to be getting off on the drama.
“I'll speak with Thorne's father at Angelina Manor this afternoon,” I said. “We tee off at four.” The private country club had a very exclusive membership. Anybody who had ever worked in any form of public media was specifically excluded. The press didn't need to be tweeting photos of the district attorney playing golf with the richest man in the parish.
“I'm his attorney. Don't cut me out of the negotiations, suge.”
“You haven't given me anything to work with. Thorne needs to meet us halfway. If he would reveal the name of the art buyer...”
He shook his head at Jeanretta.
“You have to give law enforcement something,” I said. “The sheriff thinks you've been making a fool out of this police department for the last five years, and now he's got an officer saying he was assaulted. Unless you give us something really good, you're going to prison.”
Choice of Cages Page 2